"The body is a tool for life." What is body neutrality and how it helps to accept yourself

In human society, there have always been ideals of beauty that people have tried to meet. In different eras, women were supposed to either have magnificent forms, then lose weight, then swing the ass and insert implants into the chest, then look like an androgyne. Men also periodically got it for non-athletic build, big belly, short stature or bald head. In the end, people got tired of being ashamed of their appearance, which was far from the standards, and body positive appeared - a philosophy that says that any body is beautiful.

True, after some time it became clear that body positivity does not always help to accept one's appearance and gain confidence. Therefore, he gradually transformed into a new approach - body neutrality.

What is body neutrality

This is a concept that proposes not to attach importance to your own appearance and to take your body for granted, focusing on what opportunities you get thanks to it.

The term "body neutrality" began to flash on the Internet in 2015. In 2019, the writer Anushka Rees published the book "Unadorned Beauty", in which she formulated the main ideas of body neutrality.

The body is just a physical shell that does not define you as a person, does not make you better or worse than others.
The value of the beauty of the human body is greatly exaggerated. In principle, we should not evaluate ourselves or other people as beautiful or ugly, because ideas about this are very subjective and unstable, depending on the era, geography and other factors.
Concern about one's own appearance leads to dissatisfaction and makes a person unhappy.
Beauty and attractiveness are optional ingredients for success and a happy life.
Our body gives us a lot. It allows you to look at the night sky, strewn with stars, touch your loved one, move, enjoy delicious food. And all this does not depend at all on how the body looks, whether it has acne or cellulite, whether the nose is too long and whether the chest is firm enough.

How body neutrality differs from body positive

The main idea of body positive is to love your body, to accept it and the appearance of other people as they are. Sounds inspirational, but there are a few nuances.

First, to love yourself for who you are, just in words.

After all, cinematography, media and advertising show beauty in a completely different way. And a certain standardized image of the ideal person is not so easy to get out of your head. As well as complexes, self-loathing or traumatic experience of ridicule, bullying, insults.

Secondly, body positivity opposes standards, but at the same time creates them. If we look at plus size models like Ashley Graham or Felicity Hayward, we see women with smooth skin, beautiful faces, steep hips, large breasts and relatively thin waists. Many of them put on expressive makeup, run pictures through photo editors, use the right poses and angles when taking photos, and other tricks like glittering body oil.

Ordinary chubby girls who look different begin to worry that they do not have such impressive curves, the belly is too big, and the skin is not so smooth.

Where the concept of “beauty” is used, sooner or later certain canons appear. And along with them - hypocrisy, attempts to hide some features and brighten others.

Bodineutrality proposes to completely abandon the assessment of appearance - our own or someone else's - and perceive the human body as a tool that allows us to live and perform certain actions. It is assumed that with this approach there will be no comparisons, lies, stress, self-loathing, ridicule of other people.

How to be body neutral

1. Discard ratings

Try not to measure yourself and other people in terms of “beautiful versus ugly”. Focus on those qualities that characterize a person as a person: on his intellect and charisma, on how contagious he laughs, how great he moves, what poetry he writes. Even if this person is yourself.

2. Take care of your health

Watch your diet, go in for sports, undergo medical examination on time. Not in order to fit into jeans one size smaller, but in order to climb the stairs without shortness of breath, roll on the shoulders of a child, swim heartily into the sea, stay close to your loved ones as long as possible and generally not waste your precious life on hospitals, but for something more interesting.

3. Pamper yourself

Choose clothes that you like, buy cosmetics for personal care, go for a massage. Do not deny yourself bodily pleasures just because you do not fit into the standard.

4. More often capture yourself in photos and videos

Pose with and without different clothes. Try different angles and lighting. Smile, frown, dance, grimace. Do not worry about skin irregularities, double chin, asymmetry of the eyes or stretch marks in the photo. You don't have to show the pictures to anyone. Their meaning is to see yourself from the outside, in all your manifestations, without filters and successful poses. It's about getting used to yourself, getting along with your body and its "flaws" and stop attaching great importance to them.

5. Listen to yourself

Eat when hungry, choose foods that fill you up. Don't eat if you don't feel like it, even for company or out of politeness. Buy the clothes in which you are comfortable, and not the ones that tighten, visually slim, distract attention from "imperfections". Don't torture yourself with physical activity that you don't like. Look for what you like: hiking, Nordic walking, dancing, yoga.

6. Focus on what your body can do and what you have thanks to it

You can give life, hug a loved one, stretch out from the heart in the morning, read an interesting book, have sex, earn money, pet a cat, enjoy a beautiful sunset. And the size of your hips or the density of your hair does not affect this in any way.